The Smithsonian is Missing -- The Racist Dark History of Collecting Native Remains is Silenced

The Smithsonian exploits Native American arts and culture, while covering up its history of robbing graves and refusing to return Native American remains.

Whitewashing History and Harboring Native Remains

The Smithsonian paid bounties for Native American skulls for racist studies resulting in grave robbing, executions of Native people and the Massacre at Sand Creek. Today, the Smithsonian refuses to make the facts public, and delays the return of Native American remains to their homelands for reburial.

Brenda Norrell
Censored News
January 13, 2023

In a new database showing institutions harboring Native American remains -- the Smithsonian is missing.

The Smithsonian is concealing from the public its collection of more than 10,000 Native remains, and the dark history of its racist skull collection -- for the purpose of intelligence studies based on race -- which led to grave robbing. It was one reason for the Massacre at Sand Creek.

Smithsonian Without Ethics or Morality

Lakota Village, 1891, Wounded Knee, South Dakota

Smithsonian Without Ethics or Morality

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

May 8, 2010

Since the creation of the National Museum of the American Indian, there has been an increased effort to conceal the true history of the Smithsonian Institution, especially in regard to harboring human remains and the racist cranium studies of American Indians.

The National Museum of the American Indian is the sixteenth museum of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian did not respond to my last request for information, regarding the number of American Indian remains, and American Indian skulls, that currently remain at the Smithsonian.

Owns the Sabre: Painting and walking for future generations

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

Paul Owns the Sabre Long  Walk 2 by Brenda Norrell

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Long walker Paul Owns the Sabre, Lakota from Cheyenne River, South Dakota, said he was surprised and honored to discover that one of his paintings is in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indians.
"Something good has come out of this walk for me personally," Owns the Sabre said.
The Lakota elder, 71, has been on the Long Walk 3 across America for the Reversal of Diabetes, which left the west coast in February and will arrive in DC the first week of July.

Owns the Sabre said he is glad to know that his artwork will be there for future generations, along with his contributions to the Longest Walks across America. He was walked across America on the original Long Walk for American Indian rights in 1978.

"It is a chance to leave something behind artistically. Its good to leave all this to future generations. Not many people have the chance to do this."

Appreciating the donation to the museum, Owns the Sabre said, "It is good that people think well enough of you to do this. That's really something, what can you say."

On the Long Walk 2 northern route across America in 2008, Owns the Sabre was reunited with his mother Thelma Franks, in Colorado, who he had not seen in 30 years. They reunited in Eads, Colorado, before the long walkers gathered for prayers at dawn at the site of the Sand Creek Massacre, where Cheyenne Arapaho women and children were among those massacred.
Franks passed to the Spirit World the following year.

Owns the Sabre will be in DC the first week of July, 2011, with the group of walkers who call themselves The Renegade Walkers for Diabetes.


Owns the Sabre with his mother.



In DC, the Renegade Walkers will join two other groups of walkers who departed from the west coast in February, the northern route and the southern route. The walkers will host Long Walk 3 diabetes awareness events in DC.

Paul Owns the Sabre's painting now at NMAI in DC, is titled, "I saw this in the water today." It was formerly in the collection of R.E. Mansfield (1937-2007) and donated to NMAI in 2005.

Watch a brief video of Owns the Sabre's reunion with his mother in Eads, Colorado, on the Long Walk 2:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2008/04/longest-walk-reunited-after-27-years.html
.